You're being chased. Quickly, you run inside a building and close the door. But how do you keep the door closed with such a wimpy lock? Haphazardly nail random boards across the doorway!

This is a common trope in animation. Because of Hammerspace, the character can get the needed hammer in an instant, plus a pile of boards and nails. The boards will always crisscross and overlap, as if the character doesn't have time to be precise with their work due to the dire nature of the threat on the other side. Often the boards are placed in ways that would make them bulge out and very hard to nail down. In Real Life, this is a semi-realistic trope - boarding up a door is a fairly good way to barricade it, and if you have some people to hold the door closed as you do it, then it can make a reasonably speedy improvised weapon. Variations have been used in several mediaeval and early modern sieges.

Examples

Anime and Manga

In anticipation of a typhoon, the Moroboshi family in Urusei Yatsura board up all of the doors and windows this way. In Japan, storm shutters generally come standard on houses, making this Rule of Funny.

The anime of Ranma ½ has a similar episode. There's one sequence where Ranma accidentally ends up barricading himself into a hallway and several other characters in awkward positions (Akane and Nabiki in their rooms, Soun Tendo outside, Genma out of the toilet when he really needs to go).

In another chapter, Akane gets fed up with Happosai and Ranma, so she kicks them both out of her room and boards up the door. However, it turns out that Happosai managed to not get kicked out and is looking at her lecherously. She screams Ranma's name and Ranma easily breaks through the door in his haste to get to her.

In The Mask, the eponymous hero races out of the park, closes the doors, boards them shut, chains them shut, and for good measure, locks the door. The rest of the police force was right behind him the entire time.

General Melchett: Great Scott! Even you know [the secret British plan]! Ah! Ah! Bolt all the doors! Hammer large pieces of crooked wood against the windows! This security leak is far worse than we imagined!

Video Games

In Urban Dead, characters can build barricades out of literally anything. In about one sixth of the amount of time it takes to stand up.

In Minecraft, while not always using boards, one can build a wall very quickly to keep a monster away.

For that matter the same goes for it's 2d counterpart Terraria. Especially useful during the much-dreaded Blood Moons.

This is how they try and keep the zombies out in Nazi Zombies (Call of Duty World at War/Black Ops). Indeed, its such a fundamental part of the game mechanics you get points (to buy weapons) from nailing boards down and a power up called Carpenter auto repairs all windows in the level in this style at once.

Common gag in Looney Tunes cartoons, desperate characters may even resort to producing bricks and mortar from Hammerspace and adding a brick wall to the fortifications

Camp Lazlo, where the Bean Scouts barricade the door of their cabin to keep the Squirrel Scouts out. In order to get the wood for the barricade, they completely dismantle the back wall of their cabin.

In a segment from The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror III" episode spoofing the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead, the family board up the windows in this manner, but when Marge asks Homer if he's boarded up the front door, he absent-mindedly mentions that he hasn't.

Wakko Warner takes this trope a step further in the Animaniacs episode "Temporary Insanity". In a bid to beat his siblings to the phone (Just roll with it) he first shuts the door, pulls a steel gate in front of it, then a steel door, and then an elevator door! As a finishing touch, he adds a wall of bricks.

In the South Park episode "Butt Out" Cartman wants to star in Rob Reiner's anti-smoking commercial yet the other boys don't want anything to do with him at this point. When Kyle tells him this, Cartman thinks Kyle is trying to trick him because he wants the part himself. That night Cartman boards up Kyle's door so he can't get out. Kyle, who is already outside, reiterates what he said before and it seems for a second that Cartman is considering not to show up. He then continues with his hammering.

In the Catscratch episode "Bringing' Down the Mouse", when Waffle mentions he's friends with the infamous mouse Squeakus, Gordon and Mr. Blik lock up the door. But when Waffle mention's he's actually inside the house, they unlock the door, go outside, and board up the house with a couple of boards and a log.

In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "I Was a Teenage Gary", Squidward barricades his front door and window to keep a transformed SpongeBob from getting in. The SpongeSnail manages to get inside by slipping through a knothole in the wood.

In "Squid's Day Off", Squidward boards up his door with wood, chains and police tape to keep himself inside and enjoy his "day off" without running back to the Krusty Krab to check up on SpongeBob.

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